1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure is directed to a method and system for name pronunciation guide services, and, particularly to guiding individuals and organizations to learn how to call people what they want to be called and to have their names pronounced the way they want them pronounced by others.
2. Related Art
There currently does not exist any system or method to provide services designed to help people pronounce another person's name the way that person wants it pronounced except by hearing recordings made by the person themselves, such as voice mail, which present challenges such as accents, recording quality, recording equipment challenges, background noises, accessibility, and speech impediments. There are a few websites dedicated to helping pronounce names or words where one can hear a recording of a name being pronounced. However, there are many limitations, such as, e.g., limited availability of pronounced names, incorrect and/or poor pronunciations, questionable quality of recordings and lack of advice or guidance on how to pronounce names, and/or the like. Very few sites provide written advice for how to pronounce a name, but no website provides any tools to practice name pronunciations. Moreover, when there are multiple possible and acceptable pronunciations of a name, there is no systematic method that allows a person to specify their own preferred pronunciation save by recording their own name.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system that can provide improved name pronunciation guides to help people say another person's name the way that person wants it said. This method and system are unique because one of the primary components is high quality recordings made and edited by professionals. Individuals, or “first users,” can create profiles to let others know what they want to be called and how they want their own name pronounced by others, not just recording their own name, but by selecting the professional recording that best represents how they want their name said. Other people, or “second users,” can access the first user profiles and not only hear superior recordings but also have additional tools such as pronunciation advice, multispeed recordings, International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions, “practice pronunciation” features, pronunciation feedback tools and other assistance that would be impractical or impossible to provide with a system relying on self-made voice recordings such as voicemail.
In addition, the system and method allow other people to receive likely pronunciations, or best guesses, as to how an individual would want to hear their name pronounced when a first user profile is not available. Since the system and method includes first user profiles, these probable or likely pronunciations may be created and prioritized based on unique data unavailable elsewhere. Second users can save those searches and can create profiles for other individuals, either for their own use or for the use of others.